The free world is the new continent in cyberspace that we have built so we can live here in freedom. It's impossible to live in freedom in the old world of cyberspace, where every program has its feudal lord that bullies and mistreats the users. So, to live in freedom we have to build a new continent. Because this is a virtual continent, it has room for everyone, and there are no immigration restrictions. - Richard Stallman -

TuxGuitar is a free, open source tablature editor, which includes basic features such as tablature editing, score editing, triplet support and the ability to import and export Guitar Pro gp3, gp4, and gp5 files

In addition, TuxGuitar can function as a basic MIDI editor using the tablature or staff interface, and as of the 1.0 release, can import and export MIDI files.

TuxGuitar's mascot and namesake is Tux, the penguin mascot of many games and programs originally designed for Linux.

It is written using the Java programming language, with the GUI toolkits SWT and GTK[citation needed]. Released under version 2.1 of the GNU Lesser General Public License, TuxGuitar is free and open source software.

As of October 2011, the project seems to have been abandoned. Some enthusiasts have since forked the project on SourceForge.

Supported effects.

Dead notes Supported
Accentuated notes Only heavy or regular
Harmonics Only natural, artificial, tapped, pinched, or semi harmonic
Dynamics Not displayed in the body of the score
Grace notes Limited to a duration ranging from 1/64 to 1/16 of a whole note
Tremolo picking Limited to a duration of at most 1/8 and at least 1/32 of a whole note
Slurs Not supported
Hammer-ons and pull-offs Limited support
Slides Limited support
Track effects
Multiple Tracks Supported, can be displayed by clicking View>Multitrack
Multiple Voices Supported but limited to two voices per track
Repeats Supported but limited to either open or closed barline repeats
Alter. Endings Supported but MIDI playback will only recognize the first two alternative endings, the second of which must be located above the measure that directly follows the closed repeat in order for it to be associated with the first alternative ending and the repeat in question
Custom Number of and Tuning for a Track's strings Supported but the number of strings that can be added is limited to no more than 7 and no less than 4 and they can be set to any pitch within the range of 16.352Hz and 15804.266Hz, inclusive
Does not currently allow for different-length courses, e.g. five-string banjo
Track Names Supported
Lyrics Supported
Text Supported
Chords Supported
Symbols Supported but limited to time signatures, clefs, and key signatures

Skins
TuxGuitar offers a set of three default skins that its users can choose from. These are:
Image
Name
Author
First appeared in
Description
Lavender
Sascha
v0.1
Simple, elegant theme with lavender color.
Blue serious
Licnep
v0.1
A more serious theme, where blue dominates.
Ersplus
Ersplus
v0.9
Default tuxguitar theme.
TuxGuitar also supports custom skins. The default skin for version 1.0 is Lavender.
With TuxGuitar, you will be able to compose music using the following features

Introduction:
TuxGuitar was separated into multiple projects (The main application, and a list of official plugins). This allow us to have a better compatibility with allmost JVMs, without depends if the JVM implements or not some libraries (e.g: if your JVM don’t implements Java Sound Api, so you can run tuxguitar without tuxguitar-jsa plugin ). Another advantage is that anyone can write plugins for tuxguitar even after a version was released.
The source package contains all project folders, but you don’t should try build all plugins for your Operating System. There are some plugins what have native libraries, so they aren’t multi-platform.
Configuring the Application

This is the ANT configuration file. It contains standart targets to build, package, and clean the sources. All of this targets will call to another target of a child file if “dist.file” property exists.
build.properties

This file contains some configuration properties:
ant.build.javac.source
Provide source compatibility with specified release
ant.build.javac.target
Generate class files for specific VM version
lib.swt.jni
Path of the SWT native libraries
lib.swt.jar
Full path of the swt.jar library
lib.itext.jar
Full path of the itext.jar library (Only if you will build/install tuxguitar-pdf plugin)
lib.janel-ant.jar
Full path of the janel-ant.jar library (Only for a native launcher under windows, not obligatory)
dist.version
Current version of tuxguitar
dist.file
tuxguitar’s release type. The file build.xml will call ${dist.file} for his own dist.
Supported types: linux,ubuntu,freebsd, mac and windows
dist.jar.path
Installation path for TuxGuitar.jar

ant.build.javac.source=1.4
ant.build.javac.target=1.4
lib.swt.jni=lib/
lib.swt.jar=lib/swt.jar
lib.itext.jar=lib/itext.jar
dist.file=xml/build-mac.xml
dist.version=1.0-rc4
dist.jar.path=./
dist.bin.path=./
dist.share.path=./share/
dist.doc.path=./doc/
Windows build.properties:
ant.build.javac.source=1.4
ant.build.javac.target=1.4
lib.swt.jni=lib\\
lib.swt.jar=lib\\swt.jar
lib.itext.jar=lib\\itext.jar
lib.janel-ant.jar=lib\\janel-ant-0.1.jar
dist.file=xml/build-windows.xml
dist.version=1.0-rc4
dist.jar.path=
dist.bin.path=
dist.share.path=share\\
dist.doc.path=doc\\
Building the Application:
Once you have configured build.properties, you must execute ant command on a terminal
~$ cd tuxguitar-src-1.0-rc4/TuxGuitar
~$ ant
Configuring Plugins
All tuxguitar plugins are compiled in a similar way. As the main application, they have build.xml and build.properties too.
You just need edit build.properties of the plugins you want to build.
ant.build.javac.source
Provide source compatibility with specified release (Is suggested add same value as used for build tuxguitar)
ant.build.javac.target
Generate class files for specific VM version (Is suggested add same value as used for build tuxguitar)
path.tuxguitar
Full path to tuxguitar.jar or tuxguitar classes folder
path.swt
Full path to swt.jar or swt classes folder
(Required by plugins what use GUI libraries)
path.itext
Full path to itext.jar or itext classes folder
(Required by PDF plugin only)
Building Plugins:
As the main application, you just need execute ant command on a terminal
We can take TuxGuitar-compat plugin as example:
~$ cd tuxguitar-src-1.0-rc4/TuxGuitar-compat
~$ ant
Building Application & Plugins:
Ofcourse you may want to build the main application and some plugins together.
To do that, the best option is by running ANT target by target.
NOTE: You can run ANT from the source root folder by adding the -f argument pointing to the build.xml file.
1: The first what you need, is build tuxguitar classes ( required by plugins ) but without package it ...
~$ ant -f TuxGuitar/build.xml build
2: Now you can build any plugin (assuming build.properties plugin file is pointing to TuxGuitar/build/ folder) and copy it to the TuxGuitar plugins folder
We can take TuxGuitar-compat plugin as example:
~$ ant -f TuxGuitar-compat/build.xml
~$ cp TuxGuitar-compat/tuxguitar-compat.jar TuxGuitar/share/plugins/
3: Once you finish building all wanted plugins, you can package tuxguitar.
~$ ant -f TuxGuitar/build.xml package

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